Baïnounk

Project Statistics

Sessions: 289

Audio recordings: 187

Video recordings: 43

Annotations: 25

Images: 38

Last update: 2015-8-2

The Baïnounk languages are a cluster of endangered language spoken in the Casamance area of Senegal (West Africa). Today, three main varieties of Baïnounk are spoken in Senegal and the neighbouring country Guinea Bissau. The label Baïnounk reunites people speaking these languages, people who feel that part of their cultural identity is Baïnounk, and a group of people (speaking Kobiana/Kasanga) who have privileged relationships with Baïnounk-speaking groups. The languages are closely related, but they have many differences in basic vocabulary and grammatical structure, and speakers of the different languages cannot understand each other’s Baïnounk variety.